Are there any questions? one teacher’s view of students and their questions in a fourth-grade classroom

While many teachers agree that the questions students ask are valuable, researchers have found that student questions are notably absent from most classrooms. We know almost nothing about the exceptions to this—classrooms where teachers manage to elicit and use student questions effectively in instruction. One fourth grade teacher, known for her use of student questions, was selected for this study. Classroom observations and interviews were used to gather data; qualitative methods were utilized to analyze the teacher interviews and the interactions surrounding 260 questions students asked during observations. This paper highlights the teacher’s stance toward her students and their questions. 1) The teacher viewed her students as learners who asked questions to increase their understanding. 2) The teacher viewed the assumptions revealed by student questions, as ‘steps’ to the curriculum. 3) The teacher viewed her students’ questions through the lens of potential; that is, she responded to questions based on how they might promote the understanding of her students.     

Identification,Interpretation—Evaluation,Response: An alternative framework for analyzing teacher discourse in science

Although research has come to recognize the importance of studying classroom-based student–teacher discourse in science, the emphasis remains largely on teachers' abilities to ask questions and provide students with feedback, or on students' abilities to ask questions or engage in argumentative discourse. Consequently, little research has focused on the discourse elements relating to teacher–student discourse interactions. In this article, we argue for a shift of research attention toward describing what the teacher is responding to (Identification of student inquiry), the process of deciding how to respond (Interpretation—Evaluation of student inquiry), and how the teacher is responding (Response to student inquiry). We propose a new methodological approach for studying teacher discourse, which involves a framework we developed while analyzing 1,385 minutes of fifth grade, whole-class science conversations covering a 2-year period and facilitated by an experienced science teacher. Then, as a case in point, we applied our framework to the teacher discourse data of the study, aiming to show that the framework can be a useful tool for examining how a teacher supports students' inquiry.     

Telling and Retelling Our Stories on the Professional Knowledge Landscape

Drawing on a 3-year study focusing on the shaping influences of the professional knowledge landscape on the personal practical knowledge of experienced teachers, we first explore how stories are shaped as they are told and responded to in different places and, second, explore whether or not this sharing leads to imagining new possibilities for retelling and reliving stories. By sharing and exploring a story of a disagreement between a parent and a teacher, we focus on what we do when we tell stories in schools and what we do when we tell stories off the school landscape. In making meaning from this story, we show that both in the teacher's living of the story with the parent and in her numerous recountings of the story to others on the school landscape, she did not have opportunities to figure out new ways to relive the story. In our research group, she shared her story again. In this telling, we asked her to focus on who she, the mother, and the principal are in the story, and we inquire into what plotlines each were living. We ask questions about how they were positioned as characters in relation to one another. Re-searching the story in this way enabled us to understand the embodied nature of the teacher's knowing and how this knowledge shaped the events of the story as they were lived out, particularly how the teacher's living of a relational story countered the story of teacher and principal as positioned above parent. By drawing on Nelson's work on 'found' and 'chosen' communities, we imagine ways in which schools could become chosen communities where the story of school might be one of fostering the living out of multiple stories. We imagine the stories emerging from such communities might significantly shape the landscape of schools by opening up new possibilities for living in relation with others.     

Dr. John R. Emens: President,Ball State University 1945-1968

When your student teacher is planning instruction, you might ask him to state his objectives in behavioral terms. Such statements may make the lesson more meaningful to both the student teacher and his pupils.     

Affecting Education Policy through Border Crossing between Special Education and General Education

ABSTRACT

A review of current self-study research related to teacher education policy in the United States indicates that at local, university, and state levels teacher educators are affected emotionally and professionally by policy and, in most cases, feel that policy is something done to teacher educators as opposed to something to which they can contribute and make a difference. In this article, we use our review as a base from which to consider how both special educators and general educators might use self-study to know one another better, to work collaboratively to affect policy, and to understand how policy affects them. We argue that teacher educators must work together across content areas in order to interrogate the implementation and impact of policy and to influence the development and implementation of policy.     

Moving Adapted Physical Activity: The Possibilities of Arts-Based Research

ABSTRACT

Where is the moving body in our written bodies of work? How might we articulate truly unspeakable and deeply moving moments of understanding? In what ways can we reflect and honor the knowledge of those who do not use academic words, English words, or any words at all? How might art move us to answer these questions differently—and more importantly, to ask different questions? These lines of inquiry have driven arts-based research movements within many fields including nursing, medicine, and education. In this article, we explore existing and potential uses of arts in adapted physical activity research and practice. We weave theoretical exploration, artistic engagement, and our personal experiences as researchers, practitioners and disabled movers. We do so in order to demonstrate how artistic epistemologies can enrich and expand our inquiry, understanding, and engagement in adapted physical activity.     

More than canons: teacher knowledge and the literary domain of the secondary English curriculum

Background:?The matter of teacher knowledge in the curriculum subject of English is not simple. Certainly it is not easy to delineate what its ‘content knowledge’ should be and how this relates to other aspects of teacher knowledge. In the context of education policy in England, at a time of change when the nature of the subject and its pedagogy are under scrutiny, the issue acquires heightened relevance from an initial teacher preparation perspective.

Purpose:?This paper sets out to consider the following questions: how do teachers of English acquire their teacher knowledge? What is known about the nuanced process of teacher knowledge development in English? Curriculum content is one element of teacher knowledge, but in the literary domain of English it does not suffice to specify what and how much should be read. The questions are discussed from the perspective of the knowledge development of postgraduate English teachers during initial teacher preparation.

Sources of evidence:?Literature concerning the development of teacher knowledge and expertise both generally and in the curriculum subject of English is critically discussed. Within the literature, the notion of the mentor–novice dialogue is identified as an important way of developing teacher knowledge. Alongside the literature, three illustrative mentor accounts are presented, drawn from the experience of postgraduate students learning to teach English to secondary school pupils.

Main argument:?The mentor accounts suggest that the boundaries of English are not easily demarcated. They indicate that the knowledge developed is other than the ‘content’ knowledge that might be acquired through initial degree studies. It is argued that teacher education demands a conception of teaching that takes full account of this knowledge development. At the same time, specific dispositions that do not automatically follow from prior academic attainment appear to be relevant. It is suggested that how these are cultivated, and how they are distinctive to the subject discipline are important questions for initial teacher preparation.

Conclusions:?Whatever the new contexts for initial teacher preparation, understanding how teachers acquire and apply ‘teacherly’ knowledge deserves as much attention as the content of a subject or the prior attainment of entrants to the profession. Initial teacher preparation arrangements need to acknowledge the complexity of learning to teach English as a curriculum subject. Learning to teach is a nuanced process, requiring engagement with a dedicated pedagogical content knowledge. In literary English teaching, this comprises attention to micro and macro aspects concurrently, for example through attention to individual texts concurrent with consideration of conceptions of readers and reading.     

From balance to blasphemy: shifting metaphors for researching early childhood education

This paper seeks to make trouble for the metaphor of ‘balance’ in early childhood education research, drawing on the arguments of Gore (, ), Haraway (), McWilliam (), and a study (McArdle, ) that was designed to focus not only on teacher practice, but also to inquire into ways of speaking teacher practice. Our rationale for trouble‐making is to ask questions about the way that the imperative to ‘balance’ disallows the investigation of pedagogy as a more complex field of practice, one that is inevitably riddled with unresolved and unresolvable contradictions and tensions. To understand how it is possible to think structure as freedom, we are forced to refuse any neat distinction between what enables and what constrains (McWilliam, ). For Haraway (), inquiry is ‘blasphemous’ when it refuses to ‘see’ practices in terms of the possibility of resolution, focusing instead on the irony of their unresolvability.     

大学里,什么是一堂好课

一堂堂的课,承载着教师的基本使命,教师带进课堂的,不只是课本、情感和信心,而且要带着满荷包的问题。教学即教问。创造始于问题,探究式、研究性教学就是问题式教学。一堂能引发出学生许多问题的课是好课,能引发出难倒教师的问题的课是更好的课。     

Reading Philosophically in a Community of Enquiry: Challenging Developmentality with Oram and Kitamura’s Angry Arthur

Meanings in a picturebook are constructed in the space between words, images and reader. Contemporary picturebooks are ideal vehicles for a deep reading of, and philosophical engagement with, texts that move beyond literary and literacy knowledge. Philosophy with picturebooks also offers an alternative to personal responses to these texts that are individual, subjective and anecdotal. The use of these works of art for teaching demands an epistemological reorientation with ethical and political implications. First, it is argued how picturebooks’ ambiguity and complexity demand the ‘community of enquiry’ pedagogy that positions its participants (including young children) as able meaning-makers and problem-posers. Secondly, it is shown how philosophical knowledge changes the questions lecturers, teachers and primary children ask and how these can disrupt naturalised psychological discourses about child and childhood. The argument is supported by showing how the picturebook Angry Arthur by Oram and Kitamura can be used in teacher education to teach key theoretical distinctions in the philosophy of emotions and how these ideas challenge the still current discourse of developmentality through deep readings that are also literal and not symbolic or figurative as often assumed. Angry Arthur is therefore suggested as a useful text in teacher education especially in combination with the community of enquiry pedagogy.     

(Re)thinking preservice teachers’ field experiences through a spatial lens

ABSTRACT

Space is not separable from the learning and teaching that take place in and through teacher education programs. In this paper, we attempt to illustrate how the use of a spatial lens in preservice teachers field placement can provide them with opportunities to raise questions and understand more about the relationships between self, the discursive construction of others, and taken-for-granted notions of learning and teaching. In helping preservice teachers’ critical reflections upon their spatial experience at their field sites, we specifically focus on “mapping” space as our approach to developing a critical embodied pedagogy. In particular, we highlight one White female preservice teacher’s spatial experience in a homeless shelter. We discuss the implications of developing pedagogical tools from the spatial perspective for early childhood teacher education programs.     

Teaching teaching skills

Abstract

The paper examines concerns about the teaching profession as expressed by students in their teacher education program. Differences are analyzed between the concerns of entry‐level (second‐year) students and students in their student teaching (fifth) year. Items students chose as interview questions to ask a practicing teacher were used as measures of concerns. Using content analysis techniques, categories of concerns were developed. Findings indicate that entry‐level students were primarily concerned with their career choice and with the impact of the profession on their own lives. Fifth‐year students were more interested in technical classroom skills and in the impact they would have on their future students. Implications of these findings for teacher education programs are discussed.     

My soul is a witness: Affirming pedagogies of the spirit

Utilizing a cultural ideology and an explicit discourse of spirituality, this paper seeks to answer three questions. First, what does spirituality mean for the ways in which African-American women educate and research? Second, how does the enactment and embodiment of a spiritually centered paradigm impact the learning of both teacher and student in the context of the classroom? Finally, what might such work imply in terms of theory and praxis, particularly in teacher education? Arising from a case study of an exemplar African-American female professor at a large Midwestern university, three narrative tales are shared which explicate the power and influence of a spiritual pedagogy in the lives of three African-American scholar/teachers and that challenge taken-for-granted assumptions of singularity in epistemology and representation in teaching and research.     

The Future of Teacher Education: Framing the questions that matter

As we enter the new century, there are multiple debates about what teachers need to know, who should provide education for teachers, how teachers should be certified and licensed, and what role (if any) university-based teacher preparation should play in school improvement. The author argues that the future of teacher education in the United States depends to a great extent on the ways three fundamental questions are framed: the knowledge question, the learning question, and the outcomes question. To a great extent, the ways these questions are framed and their larger agendas for the purposes and consequences of schooling will determine the future of the field.     

Interrogating ourselves to promote the democratic production,distribution, and use of knowledge through action research

ABSTRACT

This article is a report of a critical co-autoethnography action research (AR) study of Allan Feldman’s life in AR relative to the development of knowledge democracy (KD). For nearly 30 years he has been doing, studying, and writing about AR, first as a doctoral student and then as a professor. Prior to this he engaged in reflective practice as a secondary science teacher. In this study we ask how his life in AR has contributed to KD, and what actions he and others can take to increase the contribution of AR to KD. The meaning-making processes used throughout relied heavily on collaborative conversations with a critical friend (Frederick Bradley), self-reflective writing, and interrogation of the literature and Feldman’s previous writings. The findings suggest that while his work has been situated in democratic and critical aspects of AR, little of it fits in with current conceptions of KD. They also indicate that a reconfiguration of how we think about, practice, facilitate, and study AR might be necessary if we are to fall more in line with the ideals of KD. We contend the methods and results of our study can be used by others in the field, who seek to interrogate their participation in this way, and help them promote the democratic production, distribution, and use of knowledge.     

“I Just Love Black People!”: Love,Pleasure, and Critical Pedagogy in Urban Teacher Education

With concern to critical pedagogy, the concept of love is fairly frequently (ab)used, yet under-theorized. In this exploratory study, I ask: How does a critical pedagogy of love—or critical pedagogical love—look, sound, and feel? Regarding feeling, how does a critical pedagogue engage the sensations of pleasure attendant to love? Lastly, how does the pedagogue invite love and pleasure into the pain-filled field of urban teacher education? Using Black feminist theorizing of love as an analytic filter, I investigate a university-based urban teacher educator’s navigation of the nexus of love, pleasure, and critical (specifically, antiracist) pedagogy. Extrapolating from the resultant narrative portrait, I consider the affordances of a critical pedagogy of love that accesses embodied pleasure, emphasizing how such a pedagogy might present racially marginalized persons—particularly urban teacher educators of Color—with opportunities for reprieve from the suffering that characterizes many of our experiences with/in teacher education.

     

Facilitating the learning process in design-based learning practices: an investigation of teachers’ actions in supervising students

Background: In research on design-based learning (DBL), inadequate attention is paid to the role the teacher plays in supervising students in gathering and applying knowledge to design artifacts, systems, and innovative solutions in higher education.

Purpose: In this study, we examine whether teacher actions we previously identified in the DBL literature as important in facilitating learning processes and student supervision are present in current DBL engineering practices.

Sample: The sample (N=16) consisted of teachers and supervisors in two engineering study programs at a university of technology: mechanical and electrical engineering. We selected randomly teachers from freshman and second-year bachelor DBL projects responsible for student supervision and assessment.

Design and method: Interviews with teachers, and interviews and observations of supervisors were used to examine how supervision and facilitation actions are applied according to the DBL framework.

Results: Major findings indicate that formulating questions is the most common practice seen in facilitating learning in open-ended engineering design environments. Furthermore, other DBL actions we expected to see based upon the literature were seldom observed in the coaching practices within these two programs.

Conclusions: Professionalization of teachers in supervising students need to include methods to scaffold learning by supporting students in reflecting and in providing formative feedback.     

A Collaborative Approach for Teachers' In-service Training

Abstract

To different degrees, Western industrial societies are both democratic and capitalist. In some respects, the tenets of democracy and the functional needs of capitalism are at odds. The state must try to manage the tensions between the two, particularly through its education policy, including that for teacher education. This paper analyses how teacher education policy since 1980 has been influenced by these tensions. It argues that current policy in teacher education is vulnerable to the objection that it is not democratic, but cautions that those calling for a more democratic basis for teacher education might be equally vulnerable to the objection that they focus too much on the democratic ends of education rather than on the technicalities of teaching. The analysis refers mainly to Britain and the United States.     

Activity genre: a new approach to successful inclusive teaching

In this paper, I examine why constructivist practice in mathematics education, while appealing to pre-service teachers' hearts and minds, does not necessarily deliver the empowered and liberated students that many educators and policy developers seem to take for granted. I argue that this may be so because constructivist practice, although it fosters the construction of important and necessary intellectual knowledges, reinforces power/ knowledge relationships of teacher authority that these students experienced at school. I draw on a post-structuralist analysis of my own constructivist practice in teacher education to show how investments of power/knowledge and subjectivity were played out to effectively maintain the status quo , severely limiting the students' experiences and appreciation of problem-solving or investigative ways-of-being in mathematics (education). In the conclusion, I suggest steps that might be taken in teacher education to help students recognise the powerful constitutive effects of discourses and to think about the kinds of classroom relationships that might be most engaging and enabling for learners.     

The practice of whiteness among teacher candidates

This article discusses the findings of a study on 35, mostly white teacher candidates at a Canadian university. White racial identity and beliefs about causes of educational inequality are explored in relation to the teacher candidates'; value systems. Inconsistencies are found to be integral to the teacher candidates' positions. Contextualized within the practice of whiteness, the findings raise questions about the interrelationship of inconsistent beliefs, social distance, and how whiteness is effected. The author suggests that contradictory positions are a manifestation of a whiteness striving to sustain its legitimacy against an unstable social network. The denial and resistance so commonly found among white teacher candidates are performative in this sense.